FRESH FESTIVAL 2023
a door. a portal. a place.
Part 1: January 21-28, 2023
Part 2: March 4-19, 2023
January 21-28, 2023
part one
practices
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Horizontal flow
This is a dynamic floorwork technique class. We will move from our fluid body to find a soft yet strong physicality that will allow us to find (and remember) a new way to move through space with flow and ease.
It is a class that will progress throughout the week with the intention of exploring different movement qualities and sensations that will enrich your dance experience, while moving collectively with others.
photo by Miguel Zavala
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Radical immanence, activation and dancing
In this workshop, I invite you to work through the methodology of Open Source Forms to practice dancing as becoming in and among others, including the sky, the marks on the marley, the props under the stage, the energies moving in the room, and the stories that form you. Radical immanence as defined by Rosi Braidotti, is “the assumption of “the primacy of intelligent and self-organizing matter.” With this in mind I invite you to practice life-ing, activation, and ignition, as well as the rest and care that grow them. The bright fire and no-nonsense shit-kicking love of Kathleen Hermesdorf is an inspiration.
I teach because I love dancing, because I love dancing with people, because I believe in the practice of study, and because I believe in the practice of coming together. I teach because dance class is probably the only thing that has kept me sane and happy in my life and I want to share it. I teach because I am annoyed with the idea that anyone knows the right way to move and I want to make space for moving that is not about that. I teach because I want to make space for rigorous movement practice that moves towards connection, possibility and life.
My teaching sources from extensive study of experiential anatomy combined with a commitment to movement practices that are in no way limited by this study, and seek to find expanding and fantastical possibility for the body. My teaching works from the understanding that embodiment is shaped in, with, and alongside cultural forces, histories, and futures. My teaching draws from my training as a teacher of Open Source Forms (a maverick version of Skinner Releasing as transmitted by Stephanie Skura), my study of Body Mind Centering, a twenty year practice of teaching pilates, my study of craniosacral therapy, extensive practice and study alongside Miguel Gutierrez, and my longtime practice and study of the work of Sara Shelton Mann.
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Dancing + Healing
Prioritizing improvisation and collaboration we’ll play in the forest of dancing and healing. There are ancient grandmother trees there. There are baby sprouts of new life growing where devastating fires have taken lives too soon. There is a lake where we can swim and clearings where the sun’s light and warmth support our gathering. And there is also shade… sometimes cooling and sometimes brutally honest. This daily laboratory will welcome your curiosity and concerns. What’s up? What inspires you or prevents you from dancing? What activates or impedes your healing potential? How can art and care be realized as a single project or path within the practices of your life? Yes we’ll engage, both in our experimental play and in our embodied conversations, with land, ancestors, power, consent, pleasure, and community. And yes there will be fabric, objects, and costumes to support our dancing + healing.
Keith Hennessy, MFA, PhD, is a dancer, writer, choreographer, witch, activist, and teacher. Raised in Canada, living in Ramaytush Ohlone territory (San Francisco) since 1982, he tours widely. Using improvisation, ritual, collaboration, and protest, Keith instigates queer embodied experiences that respond to political crises. Hennessy directs Circo Zero, co-founded the performance/culture spaces 848 and CounterPulse, and was a member of Sara Mann’s Contraband, 1985-1994. Awards include Guggenheim, NY Bessie, USArtist, and Bay Area Izzie.
photo by Robbie Sweeny
Albert Mathias is a multi-disciplinary musician. He creates and performs original compositions for dance, theater, film, and video, and was music director for ALTERNATIVA, a platform for training and performance with the late Kathleen Hermesdorf. He was a member of Bebe Miller Company and Contraband, and has produced 15 records of original music, most notably with internationally acclaimed trio Live Human.
exchanges
Gut Motives
pedagogy talk @CounterPulse
Kathleen Hermesdorf deployed a groundbreaking class structure and visceral approach to movement that was communal, futuristic, and physically ecstatic. Join us to reflect and connect about Kathleen’s movement teaching and philosophy. This conversation will include the inimitable Albert Mathias, co-founder of FRESH FESTIVAL and Gut Motives co-teacher and collaborator. Albert Mathias will discuss their 26 years of teaching and what they learned. Particularly, what were the ingredients and why did they work? This will be a discussion on legacy, dance, and the class that has sparked so much joy in each of us.
+KK’s Birthday party BASH!! @CounterPulse
March 4-19, 2023
part two
practices
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Body, Geometry & Flow
The workshop proposes a space for exploring diverse types of movement accessed through guided improvisations based on specific body tasks. The guided improvisations focus on spatial awareness, consciousness of one’s surroundings, performing, musicality and creativity. Subsequently, explorations through collective exercises where the collective body stimulates the individual body help displace familiar body configurations and movement patterns. Each class concludes with instant composition exercises, based on the toolset and logics of David Zambrano’s Passing Through technique. The objective of the workshop is to create a body with an expanded ability to transform geometrically, fluidly, and spatially in individual and collective movement. Body, Geometry & Flow has been taught at institutions and spaces such as Movement Research - The 9th Street Studios, Codarts Circus Arts, CEPRODAC, Ballet Folklórico de México, Universidad de Sonora, Universidad Veracruzana & la Cantera, among others.
Interdisciplinary artist born in Hermosillo, Sonora. Jose Ramón Corral works Internationally as a freelance artist (based out of México) collaborating with different companies and projects, and as a teacher in various institutions. He also co-directs FUTURET, an artistic initiative for the creation and production of contemporary dance in convergence with other disciplines from the city of Hermosillo, Sonora, dedicating their efforts to transforming the artistic scene in their town, with an emphasis on creating dignified work spaces for local artists and thus being able to make quality work accessible to a new generation of audiences.
He had a multidisciplinary training in spaces and companies such as Núcleo Antares, Danscentrumjette DCJ, Tecnológico de Monterrey, the Australian Dance Theater, Ultima Vez, laCantera, CEPRODAC, Centro de las Artes San Agustín (CaSa) and EX-IN, among others.
As a teacher, he has shared his pedagogic approach in spaces and institutions such as Movement Research - The 9th st. Studios, Academia de la Danza Mexicana (INBAL), Codarts Circus Arts, Universidad de Sonora, laCantera Estudio de Danza, Omi International Arts Center, CEPRODAC, Universidad Veracruzana, Piso Cuatro, 303 Estudio, the Dance Company of Universidad Anáhuac México Sur, Centro de las Artes de San Luis Potosí, CAMP_iN, Yogadance Center, Tres Once Studio, Cía. Tania Pérez-Salas, Sala de Arte Créssida, Danz / Corp and Danzare Cefart.
In the field of cultural management, he has collaborated with organizations such as Moving Borders Scenic art without borders, for CAMP_iN (2015, 2016, 2017, 2018); Duela / Cemento, for Intensive by David Zambrano in Oaxaca (2017); PILOT Festival (2017) and Movement techniques for ATLAS México Festival (2018, 2019). During his academic and professional development, he has benefited from various public and private programs such as Ópera Prima @elcolectivo (2012); CEPRODAC (2013-2015); PECDA-FECAS (2015) and FONCA (2017, 2018), and residency programs such as Art Omi: Dance Residency, SOL@S LAB at the San Luis Potosí Arts Center; the Lila López International Dance Festival; the diploma program Interacciones: Cuerpos en Diálogo of CaSa San Agustín, and as a resident performer in the Afinidades Insospechadas program of CaSa San Agustín.
He has created multiple works for the stage, many of which have been the product of collaborations and have been performed in important stages in Mexico, as well as in Belgium, the United States, Greece and Costa Rica. Some of these include the International Festival Un Desierto Para la Danza; Movement Research at Judson Memorial Church, OMI International Arts Center, SóLODOS en Danza (Costa Rica), season 101 of TCUNAM and EX-IN, to name a few.
As a performer, he has been part of stage projects in companies such as Antares Danza Contemporánea, CEPRODAC, ASYC / El Teatro de Movimiento, A Poc A Poc, Moving Borders - Scenic Art without Borders, Cía. Tania Pérez-Salas, Laleget Danza & Physical Momentum, as well as in independent and collective creations.
Corral continually looks for ways to blur the stereotypes of a "dance performer" and the formats in which this dance performer is presented. His studies and collaborations with artists such as David Zambrano, Raúl Parrao, Galia Eibenschutz, Roberto Olivan, Miguel Mancillas, Francisco Córdova, Melva Olivas, and Erich Weiss have given him powerful creative tools, which fuel him as he continues to bridge a gap between artistic disciplines that transform the perceptions of the spaces surrounding humanity.
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PHENOMENAL BODIES
dance training & improvisation as experiential research practices
Rather than thinking about the body let’s think with the body.
For me the Axis Syllabus is a collective and living archive of information about the body in motion and a departure point for how we can study and describe the body in motion. It offers ways of experimenting and theorizing from within the moving bodymind in dialogue with findings and perspectives offered by different sciences such as physics, biomechanics, anatomy or kinesiology. In my work I am interested in entangling deep introspective states of experiencing one’s own body with relating towards each other in improvisation as well as moving together sharing accents, rhythms and specific compositional relationships. Along preparing the dancer with sustainable tools and letting a state of questioning flourish, my aim is to expand perception as relational beings and from there create a somatic -energetic- technical virtuosity.
In my classes I create scenarios for textured and embodied dancing and a learning environment where your body can self-organize and thrive. Movement material, sensations, coordination and perspectives of anatomy and biomechanics are proposed to explore. The information ideally self-seeds into resilient and adapted movement fitting your body and environments as well as open new curiosities for autonomous study and practice. In my pedagogical work I celebrate learning through movement and dancing together.
Kira Kirsch is a dance artist, dance educator, dance researcher and community builder. Based in Berlin since 2015 she has been collaborating in building a furthering educational program for dance & movement professionals at Lake Studios under the name of “Movement Artisans”, created an annual festival called “Sensing In” and hosted several dance research residencies and symposiums at Lake Studios and Tanzfabrik developing and collecting collaborative research methodologies for dancers at the intersection of art, science and transmission. She has been a regular guest teacher at the HZT Bachelor and Master program and teaches internationally. Her artistic work is deeply influenced by her 7 years in San Francisco dancing with Sara Shelton Mann, Avi K.productions or Nita Little & the Divisadero Research Company among many others. Recent projects that engage with the madness and unseen relations in this world and at their heart are studies of energy and visualising the movement of energy include dance films, music videos, touch residencies and site specific works. Kira is a also a passionate contact improvisor.
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Learn [ Dance of Life = Four direction Pray ]
Choreographs are series of transformations.
( Wing,Cloud,Wind,Mist,Dew,Earth,Sky,Flower, Hollow, etc.)
View yourself on the spinning planet Earth traveling across the Universe,
Knowing your presentness ( Structure & detail of presentness.)
1952 born Fukuoka ,Japan ( Sunny country)
1960's 8~18 age, lived Tottori , Japan ( Snow country )
1970's 18~27 age, lived Tokyo, Japan ( Big City )
Butoh ( Hijikata Tatsumi ), Marriage ( Koichi Tamano ),a Child, left Japan.
1980's 27~37 age, based in BERKELEY. dance in SF.
Mabuhay Garden, Punk rock, Angels of Light
Fusako de Angels, Wavy Gravy , Campwinnarainbow.
1990's 37~47 age, 95; Country Station Sushi Cafe Open
2000's 47~57 age, 12; Sushi Cafe Closed.
2010's 57~67 age, an Art commissioner of City of Berkeley
2020's 67~
* Annual Events :
Butoh Gathering " Life & Death Celebration" in March , Berkeley
Butoh Showcase " Bare Bones Butoh showcase" in Oct. SF
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Dancing in Tongues
This workshop will center on the relationship between movement and language. What's up with words? How does dance connect to text? When does language emerge from the body, and when does it feel disembodied, oppressive, or just plain wrong? How can we choreograph our mouths, tongues, and teeth? In practical terms we will work with: (1) devising the best lip-sync performances in the world, (2) translating text into movement and vice versa, and (3) incorporating spoken text into physical, movement-based performances.
I keep busy as a drag queen and performance artist. My research-based, interdisciplinary practice emerges from eight years of engagement with the Bay Area’s queer nightlife as a drag queen, DJ, and barfly. Drag and it's over-the-top performance sensibility are central to my work and my ongoing engagement with questions around gender, sexuality, embodiment, and technology. I have performed and presented video work at many local venues including CounterPulse, Berkeley Art Museum, the Cantor Center for the Arts, / (slash) art, and 2727 California Street.
My goal as a teacher is to create a welcoming space with clear agreements and guidelines within which participants can improvise and collaborate. Exercises are designed to encourage participants to follow the thread of their own interests, in the hopes of helping you break through creative blocks or figure out the beginning of a future piece. My favorite workshop to teach in the past was Bad Acting, where we transformed tropes from soap operas, B-movies, and reality TV into performance art gold. Making work can be lonely, and in class, we can chase that loneliness away with the collective energy of our minds and bodies at work.
photo by Chani Bockwinkel
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The foundation/energy and structure
We will engage in simple basics of looking and feeling through the body from the feet/ground up. We will travel through the subtle energies of the chakras and the orchestra of the systems through imagination and action. writing, chi cultivation and qigong will weave through the classes. time/space/location -mystery/magic/3. Bring your questions. We’ll build puzzles for your tool kit.
Sara Shelton Mann has been a choreographer, performer, teacher since 1967. She was a protégé of Alwin Nikolais and Murray Louis in N.Y.C. before moving to Canada where fell in love with contact improvisation. In 1979 she moved to SFCA and started the Performance Group, Contraband combining the principles of contact, systems of the body and spiritual practice into a unified system of research. Among her awards are a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, 6 Isadora Duncan Awards, Djerassi Artist in Residence Awards, Headlands Center for the Arts Residency 2016, Lifetime Achievement Bay Guardian Award, 10 Women who made a Difference, Bay Guardian Award, Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists award(2016). Sara has practiced dowsing as a healing modality since 2010, is a Master NLP practitioner, and has a Master Certification in Intuition Medicine . Her Movement Alchemy training is an ongoing teaching project and is influenced by certifications and studies in the metaphysical and healing traditions over many years. Sara’s performance work is a platform for collaboration and research in consciousness.
photo by Robbie Sweeny
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workshop|movingneareachtheother
what are the terms of being, nearness, other, form, queer, desire, body, subject? how is BLACK at the center of our considerations of movement? what could it mean to tell stories by moving through questions of (mis)alignment and wonder at craft? this workshop centers questioning as making; thinking as moving; Black life as sourcecode for creative invention. how can we queer the terms of sharing possibilities so that something unexpected can come forward?
Thomas F. DeFrantz directs SLIPPAGE: Performance|Culture|Technology, a research lab that explores emerging technology in live performance applications. Believes in our shared capacity to do better and engage creative spirit for a collective good that is anti-racist, proto-feminist, and queer affirming. Convenes the Black Performance Theory working group as well as the Collegium for African Diaspora Dance, a growing consortium of 325 researchers committed to exploring Black dance practices in writing. Recent teaching: University of the Arts Mobile MFA in Dance; ImPulsTanz; SNDO; Juilliard; New Waves Institute; faculty at Hampshire College, Stanford, Yale, MIT, NYU, Northwestern University; University of Nice. Has chaired Program in Women’s and Gender Studies at MIT; the concentration in Physical Imagination at MIT; the Department of African and African American Studies at Duke; and served as President of the Society of Dance History Scholars. DeFrantz acted as a consultant for the Smithsonian Museum of African American Life and Culture, contributing concept and a voice-over for a permanent installation on Black Social Dance that opened with the museum in 2016.
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diving into being
diving into being is a class that offers an improvisatory landscape of generative play and imaginative rigor. Together we will shape-shift and risk-take; challenge self-conceived limits of generosity; fortify creative, investigative, and physical stamina; and plummet into the exquisite mess.
Maurya Kerr is a bay area-based artist and the artistic director of tinypistol. Much of her work—across the disciplines of movement, language, and film—is focused on black and brown people reclaiming their birthright to both wonderment and the quotidian. Maurya was a member of Alonzo King LINES Ballet for twelve years, an ODC artist-in-residence from 2015 to 2018, and holds an MFA in dance from Hollins University. Most recently she co-curated ODC Theater’s 2023 season alongside artist Leyya Mona Tawil. Maurya's poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart prize, appears in multiple journals, and is anthologized in “The Future of Black: Afrofuturism, Black Comics, and Superhero Poetry.” She was a 2021/22 UC Berkeley ARC (Arts Research Center) Poetry & the Senses Fellow, and her first chapbook, MUTTOLOGY, is forthcoming with Harbor Editions in 2023.
photo by alan kimara dixon
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fat as muse
Fat is one of the materials we have for this life. For this art. For this moving. For this grounding. For this dancing.
Fat is one of the materials we have for this fight. For this loving. For this raging. For this heart breaking. For this grieving.
Fat is one of the materials.
Your fat is pulsating with more energy density than any other tissue in your body, but rarely are we invited to come to our fat as a resource. What gets lost to us as dancers, movers, artists and beings when we are not in connection with our fat? Join Jules Pashall, aka fat as the sea, to explore what happens when we contact our fat with embodied, reverent curiosity. In this gathering fat is our muse- our creative origin point. On our first day we will move, sound and write in a space of reverence and curiosity (not a forced positivity) for our fat. On day 2, we will continue working solo and together to create short pieces that emerge from our fat. All are welcome and the experiences of people living in fat bodies will be centered.
Jules Pashall (fat as the sea) is a fat, white, trans/queer Jew who holds space as a somatic, creative and spiritual practitioner. For 15 years, they have been exploring fat as a resource for performance and transformation. Jules holds a master’s degree in Somatic Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies and their writing can be found in The Fat Studies Journal, Diverse Bodies, Diverse Practices: Toward an Inclusive Somatics and the upcoming Fat Performance Reader. You can find their work @fat.as.the.sea.
FRESH 23 PANEL
with Thomas F. DeFrantz, Kira Kirsch, José Ramón Corral
performances
Unfold
José Ramón Corral
Performance improvisation exploring duality and fluidity. The piece departs from a physical exploration of body images which resonate with the subtle realm, seeking to embody concepts from mythology, quantum physics, holistic biology and energy work.
Closer
ISHMAEL HOUSTON JONES X
KEITH HENNESSEY
Closer: An improvised performance by Ishmael Houston-Jones (NY) and Keith Hennessy (SF)
Ishmael (NY) and Keith (SF) first collaborated in the mid-90s and have continued for 25 years a deep conversation about art, collaboration, improvisation, race, activism, sex, dance, history and futures. When they dance together, the conversation and research continues. There will be questions, there will be answers, and much of the rest is unknown…
Ishmael Houston-Jones’ improvised dance and text work has been performed world-wide. Drawn to collaborations as a way to move beyond boundaries and the known, Houston-Jones celebrates the political aspect of cooperation. Keith Hennessy, is a frolicker, imperfectionist, and witch working in the fields of dance, performance, activism, affordable housing, and teaching. Hennessy’s work is interdisciplinary and experimental, motivated by his participation in political movements. Ishmael (NY) and Keith (SF) first collaborated in the mid-90s and have continued for 25 years a deep conversation about art, collaboration, improvisation, race, activism, sex, dance, history and futures. When they perform together, the conversation and research continues.
Lonely 1.
…a black ramble …
thomas f. defrantz/SLIPPAGE
slippage has begun a multi-year project to grapple with the terms of loneliness, an epidemic of the 21st century.
does sex make you less lonely?
do you really want BBC?
where are you least lonely?
when does connection happen?
which track on RENAISSANCE feeds you the most?
when does this performance begin?
Thomas F. DeFrantz directs SLIPPAGE: Performance|Culture|Technology, a research lab that explores emerging technology in live performance applications. Believes in our shared capacity to do better and engage creative spirit for a collective good that is anti-racist, proto-feminist, and queer affirming. Convenes the Black Performance Theory working group as well as the Collegium for African Diaspora Dance, a growing consortium of 325 researchers committed to exploring Black dance practices in writing. Recent teaching: University of the Arts Mobile MFA in Dance; ImPulsTanz; SNDO; Juilliard; New Waves Institute; faculty at Hampshire College, Stanford, Yale, MIT, NYU, Northwestern University; University of Nice. Has chaired Program in Women’s and Gender Studies at MIT; the concentration in Physical Imagination at MIT; the Department of African and African American Studies at Duke; and served as President of the Society of Dance History Scholars. DeFrantz acted as a consultant for the Smithsonian Museum of African American Life and Culture, contributing concept and a voice-over for a permanent installation on Black Social Dance that opened with the museum in 2016.
Painting by Alessandro Ubirajara. Collage Risk #03, 2017. Collage with Berlin street posters and drawings on paper
The Urgency of Now
Choreography and Performance by Jorge De Hoyos and Kira Kirsch
Now keeps moving on, and Here keeps shifting around. Two collaborators jump into the rodeo trying to catch a moment; surf a force; ride a wave; live a life for a time; dance…
A process-in-progress, Jorge De Hoyos and Kira Kirsch remember their shared trainings in San Francisco more than a decade ago, and they’ve been updating each other on what’s been going on since. Trying to keep the game simple, they’re looking for where the energy is—how to call it out, choreograph it or let it run wild…
RIPE
RIPE is co-produced with
Performance Primers:
Grounded in DIY sensibility, Primers ask: what do local artists need? The Primers grow in direct response to continued evidence that our East Bay community needs accessible performance space, caring community, and production support to thrive. In our constantly evolving context, we provide fluid structural support to artists of all kinds. The Primers team listens to artists’ needs because we are the artists we serve. We are intentionally based and remain in Oakland, Ohlone territory: a Black city with a legacy of radical mutual aid, deconstructing oppressive systems, and fostering artistic abundance; principals that we align with in our work.
performanceprimers.com
RIPE Artists
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![Barbara Valencia / Rizoma Laboratorio Escenico]()
Barbara Valencia / Rizoma Laboratorio Escenico
“El blanco es un color callado” is a solo dance-theater project that through playfulness, amazement and the resignification of objects wonders what happens when we die. In a limbo where logic loses its meaning, the character in this work transits between life and death discovering the organization of this non-place through which it wanders. Only through play, contemplation and surprise the character will find answers and metaphors to understand the path and transformation on this plane.
\ With a Bachelor in Performing Arts, Barbara is a creator and performer who has worked in Mexico, the United States, Canada and Italy. She is the director of Rizoma Laboratorio Escénico, a project that embraces creation, production and workshops since 2016. As a dancer, she holds two awards for Best Female Performance at the Guillermo Arriaga National Mexican Award '19 and at Ibérica Contemporánea '17. As a creator, she has received awards from Secretaries of Culture such as Apoyarte '19 and '20, directed a National Circuit of Performing Arts '22 and artist residencies in the United States and Canada. She believes that the body should be an excuse for everything.
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![Eileen Kilometers]()
Eileen Kilometers
Eileen Kilometers is a drag queen, a time traveler, and a shapeshifter, traversing various forms of expression and embodiment while maintaining a distinct and otherworldly self. Through dance, spoken word, and lip sync, this performance finds Eileen in her private space, in her home “off stage”, her place of creation. Over the past years, she has sat back as a being of her conjuring, a ghost-zombie Vladimir Lenin, cobbled from the remains of his body, has stepped forward. Now, this is a return to the source, an attempt at an origin story. Wrestling with the messy process of creation, exhuming a femininity of the depths, Eileen writes at her typewriter and attempts to transform her text into movement, enlivening the words through and beyond the body.
Jyoti Arvey (aka Eileen Kilometers) is a San Francisco based artist creating work at the intersection of text and performance. Invested in carving out space and time in which the impossible can be conjured, their work reaches into other realms, engaging with the more than human and the spiritual as modes of investigation and co-creation. In 2017, they began performing in drag as Eileen Kilometers at Aunt Charlie’s Lounge, and have since performed at venues across the city including CounterPulse, SAFEhouse, and The Convent Arts Collective. They are currently at work on a poetry collection and a novel.
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![Brianna Elyse Torres and chinchin hsu]()
Brianna Elyse Torres and chinchin hsu
Chinchin Hsu and I are in the process of excavating the meaning of grief, light, ancestry, Indigenity and friendship. Inspired by the book "What Happens Between The Knots," by Gloria Anzaldúa we examine how our communities navigate being separated and how we, as melanated individuals, may all be silently grieving the feelings of displacement. This book and our piece is a mezcla of poetry, movement, visual art, and Indigenous wisdom. This piece is a promise to ourselves to continue to listen to the unseen and a prayer to create from an expansive, anchored human heart-centered space.
Brianna Elyse Torres (she/her): Born on the native Lenape land of New York, New York, Brianna is Puerto Rican birthworker, care worker, poet, aspiring designer, and movement artist living on Lisjan Ohlone lands. She is an alumni of Laguardia Performing Arts High School and the San Francisco Conservatory of Dance. Brianna is a deep believer in movement as a way to heal, grieve and access collective joy. She honors her dear friend Chinchin, her ancestors and light beings as she creates new movement projects.
chinchin hsu (she/her/她), was born and raised in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. moved to the U.S. in 2004 and now resides on Ramaytush lands; a southeast asian immigrant, a teaching artist, now a dance mama of two little humans. she has trained in tai-chi, chinese martial art, chinese ballet, western ballet, various modern techniques, improvisation and composition. chinchin is curious how imagination and motherhood combine themselves in this process of creativity and how they will manifest a stage sharing performance today. she is delighted to be in this dialogue with Brianna in imagining all possible and imposibles.
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![Emily Jones and Hannah Krafcik]()
Emily Jones and Hannah Krafcik
Our Aesthetics Project *working title* weaves together dancing and dialogue with sensorial sculpture. We initiated this project while in residence at Ellis-Beauregard Foundation and continued to develop it at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art’s Creative Exchange Lab. It functions as a living “artist talk” about the mysterious relationship between aesthetics and intuition.
We began this project with a focus on sensory processing, asking…How do aesthetics support or derail our processes of self-regulation and self-determination? What causes us to seek out certain forms of stimulation, e.g. hues of color or sensations of texture? How do these inclinations help us draw near to and develop affinity with one another? We know our questions will not lead us to concrete answers but, rather, more fractals of thought undergirding the project. Ultimately, we aim to give credence to the ineffable importance of aesthetics for art-making and daily life.
We are Emily Jones (she/they) and Hannah Krafcik (they/them), a collaborative based out of Portland, OR. Our inquiries are seeded by personal experiences of disability and neurodivergence, and our choreographic offerings explore tensions between social power dynamics and unnamed personal needs. We maintain that sensory autonomy—the ability to honor and explore one's own sensory needs and desires—is an essential step in naming, refusing, and even subverting coercive power dynamics that touch every aspect of life. We focus on consent as we develop our dance works, creating compositions that prioritize the nuances of relationality over virtuosity.
